Transforming digital customer experience at Surrey County Council
Surrey County Council is a local government body supporting a population of around 1.2 million people. I worked with them on a project exploring how to transform their digital services and create a future vision for customer experience.
The challenge
The council serves a diverse population with varying levels of digital literacy and needs. While some residents prefer and expect digital self-service options, others require traditional face-to-face support. The challenge Surrey County Council faced was how to build digital services that genuinely work for everyone - without leaving the less digitally confident behind.
Image: Example design patterns from a Blue Badge application journey
This ambition was being held back by some deep-rooted issues including: siloed team-working, inconsistent and often confusing customer journeys, outdated technology underpinning some services, and limited use of customer data making it difficult for the council to understand resident needs or personalise support.
What I did
Working closely with the IT and Digital Design teams, I supported a discovery phase to dig into these challenges and start mapping a way forward. The work spanned four key areas:
Research and insight gathering: I ran workshops, conducted horizon scanning, and supported stakeholder interviews to surface pain points and unmet needs - drawing on perspectives from both council staff and residents. This gave us an evidence-based view of where the weaknesses and opportunities lay.
Journey mapping and service design: Working with council teams, I mapped how residents currently move through key services - from first contact to resolution - and created future state service blueprints. This made it easier to spot where journeys were unnecessarily complicated, where channels weren't joining up, and where the biggest opportunities for improvement lay.
Website review: I carried out a user experience audit of the council's main website and microsites, identifying practical changes that could be made quickly alongside longer-term recommendations for a more thorough transformation.
Design artefacts and roadmapping: I helped co-create a set of practical tools to guide the council's transformation - including service design patterns, a capability and technology roadmap, prioritised recommendations, and a CRM analysis outlining what data capabilities the council would need to deliver on its ambitions.
The outcome
By the end of the discovery phase, the council had a clear, evidence-based foundation to build from - with prioritised recommendations and a shared understanding of where to focus first. The council is now acting on those recommendations, starting with improvements to the website and core customer journeys, with a longer-term programme of transformation underway.